Democracy Forum

Host: Ann Luther, League of Women Voters of Maine

The mostly volunteer team at the League of Women Voters – Downeast who plan and coordinate this series includes: Martha Dickinson, Michael Fisher, Starr Gilmartin, Maggie Harling, Lisa Leaverton, Ann Luther, Rick Lyles, Judith Lyles, Wendilee O’Brien, Maryann Ogonowski, emerita, Lane Sturtevant, Leah Taylor, and Linda Washburn.

Democracy Forum: Participatory Democracy, encouraging citizens to take an active role in government and politics

This month:
We’ll talk about book banning in an historical and political perspective: tensions between First Amendment rights and rights of parental control; whether and how book bans reflect the tip of the iceberg of other coercive ambitions: controlling ideas, controlling culture, controlling people, etc. What is happening in Maine and around the country?

Guest/s:
1. Lindsay Decker, Librarian at the Fogler Library at the University of Maine and also a member of the Maine Library Association’s Intellectual Freedom Committee (IFC).
2. Kasey Meehan, Program Director, Freedom to Read, PEN America.
3. Jason Stanley, Jacob Urowsky Professor of Philosophy at Yale University.

To learn more about this topic:
Banned Books Week (October 1 – 7, 2023) | ALA
LIVE from NYPL and The Atlantic | Banned: Censorship and Free Expression in America, October 5
Books Unbanned | The Seattle Public Library (spl.org)
Books Unbanned | Brooklyn Public Library (bklynlibrary.org)
Intellectual Freedom – Maine State Library
Florida schools got hundreds of book complaints — mostly from 2 people, August, 2023
Twenty-two challenges to school library books have been filed in Maine since January 2022. Just one book has been removed. | Maine Monitor, August, 2023
The Book Banners on the Left – by Cathy Young | The Bulwark, August, 2023
Inside Moms for Liberty’s summit: Big money and money even bigger conspiracy theories | Media Matters for America, July 2023
You can’t tell the truth about the Holocaust in Poland. Could that happen in the US? | USA Today, July, 2023
How book-banning campaigns have changed the lives and education of librarians – they now need to learn how to plan for safety and legally protect themselves | The Conversation, July. 2023

About the host:
Ann currently serves as Treasurer of the League of Women Voters of Maine and leads the LWVME Advocacy Team. She served as President of LWVME from 2003 to 2007 and as co-president from 2007-2009. In her work for the League, Ann has worked for greater public understanding of public policy issues and for the League’s priority issues in Clean Elections & Campaign Finance Reform, Voting Rights, Ethics in Government, Ranked Choice Voting, and Repeal of Term Limits. Representing LWVME at Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, she served that coalition as co-president from 2006 to 2011. She remains on the board of MCCE and serves as Treasurer. She is active in the LWV-Downeast and hosts their monthly radio show, The Democracy Forum, on WERU FM Community Radio -which started out in 2004 as an recurring special, and became a regular monthly program in 2012. She was the 2013 recipient of the Baldwin Award from the ACLU of Maine for her work on voting rights and elections. She joined the League in 1998 when she retired as Senior Vice President at SEI Investments. Ann was a founder of the MDI Restorative Justice Program, 1999 – 2000, and served on its Executive Board.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Host: Ann Luther, League of Women Voters of Maine

The mostly volunteer team at the League of Women Voters – Downeast who plan and coordinate this series includes: Martha Dickinson, Michael Fisher, Starr Gilmartin, Maggie Harling, Lisa Leaverton, Ann Luther, Rick Lyles, Judith Lyles, Wendilee O’Brien, Maryann Ogonowski, emerita, Lane Sturtevant, Leah Taylor, and Linda Washburn.

Democracy Forum: Participatory Democracy, encouraging citizens to take an active role in government and politics

This month:
Ballot Questions: Whose Initiatives Are They?
We’ll talk about the citizen initiative process in Maine: the sheer number of them, the money behind them, their strengths and shortcomings, home-grown vs. “from away.”
How does the initiative process work, and how is it working for Maine?
Can ordinary citizens can still run a ballot question?

Guest/s:
Shenna Bellows, Maine Secretary of State
Todd Donovan, Professor of Political Science, Western Washington University

To learn more about this topic:
As Abortion Measures Loom, GOP Raises New Barriers to Ballot Initiatives | The Pew Charitable Trusts, February, 2023
Missouri House Passes Bill Making It Harder for Voters To Amend State Constitution – Democracy Docket, February, 2023
Policy Matters: Ballot initiatives – Press Herald, November 17,2022
League Study On Maine’s Citizens’ Initiatives And People’s Veto Referenda, Fall, 2020
Initiatives without Engagement: A Realistic Appraisal of Direct Democracy’s Secondary Effects, Joshua J. Dyck & Edward L. Lascher, Jr., Jr., 2019
Democracy Forum – Citizen Initiatives: The Devil’s in the Details, April 19, 2019
Initiative and Referendum Overview and Resources | NCSL
Citizen Initiatives & Peoples Veto | Maine Secretary of State
Citizens as Legislators: Direct Democracy in the United States, Todd Donovan and Shaun Bowler, 1998

About the host:
Ann currently serves as Treasurer of the League of Women Voters of Maine and leads the LWVME Advocacy Team. She served as President of LWVME from 2003 to 2007 and as co-president from 2007-2009. In her work for the League, Ann has worked for greater public understanding of public policy issues and for the League’s priority issues in Clean Elections & Campaign Finance Reform, Voting Rights, Ethics in Government, Ranked Choice Voting, and Repeal of Term Limits. Representing LWVME at Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, she served that coalition as co-president from 2006 to 2011. She remains on the board of MCCE and serves as Treasurer. She is active in the LWV-Downeast and hosts their monthly radio show, The Democracy Forum, on WERU FM Community Radio -which started out in 2004 as an recurring special, and became a regular monthly program in 2012. She was the 2013 recipient of the Baldwin Award from the ACLU of Maine for her work on voting rights and elections. She joined the League in 1998 when she retired as Senior Vice President at SEI Investments. Ann was a founder of the MDI Restorative Justice Program, 1999 – 2000, and served on its Executive Board.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Host: Ann Luther, League of Women Voters of Maine

The mostly volunteer team at the League of Women Voters – Downeast who plan and coordinate this series includes: Martha Dickinson, Michael Fisher, Starr Gilmartin, Maggie Harling, Lisa Leaverton, Ann Luther, Rick Lyles, Judith Lyles, Wendilee O’Brien, Lane Sturtevant, Leah Taylor, and Linda Washburn.

Democracy Forum: Participatory Democracy, encouraging citizens to take an active role in government and politics

This month:
We’ll talk about whether modern polling techniques have been good for democracy. Is polling a reflection of public opinion; is it shaping public opinion; or is it distorting public opinion? Who is it helping? And how can we be responsible consumers of polling information?

Guest/s:
Ashley Koning, Assistant Research Professor and Director of the Eagleton Center for Public Interest Polling at the Eagleton Institute of Politics, Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.
Dan Shea, Chair and Professor of Government at Colby College.

To learn more about this topic:
Public Opinion Polling Basics | Pew Research Center
Two Schools of Polling Are Converging: Reflecting on a Tumultuous Decade | The New York Times, May, 2023
How Public Polling Has Changed in the 21st Century | Pew Research Center Methods, April, 2023
Polls’ Representative Samples Often Merit Skepticism | WSJ, April, 2023
The Polls Were Historically Accurate In 2022 | FiveThirtyEight, March, 2023
Some midterm polls were on-target – but finding which pollsters and poll aggregators to believe can be challenging | The Conversation, November, 2022
Seven Ways to Evaluate a Poll | FiveThirtyEight, August, 2021
Harvard experts weigh the good and bad of political predictions | The Harvard Gazette, November, 2020
The Problems Inherent in Political Polling | The New Yorker, March, 2020
Can We Trust the Presidential-Election Polls? | The New Yorker, March 2020

About the host:
Ann currently serves as Treasurer of the League of Women Voters of Maine and leads the LWVME Advocacy Team. She served as President of LWVME from 2003 to 2007 and as co-president from 2007-2009. In her work for the League, Ann has worked for greater public understanding of public policy issues and for the League’s priority issues in Clean Elections & Campaign Finance Reform, Voting Rights, Ethics in Government, Ranked Choice Voting, and Repeal of Term Limits. Representing LWVME at Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, she served that coalition as co-president from 2006 to 2011. She remains on the board of MCCE and serves as Treasurer. She is active in the LWV-Downeast and hosts their monthly radio show, The Democracy Forum, on WERU FM Community Radio -which started out in 2004 as an recurring special, and became a regular monthly program in 2012. She was the 2013 recipient of the Baldwin Award from the ACLU of Maine for her work on voting rights and elections. She joined the League in 1998 when she retired as Senior Vice President at SEI Investments. Ann was a founder of the MDI Restorative Justice Program, 1999 – 2000, and served on its Executive Board.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Host: Ann Luther, League of Women Voters of Maine

The mostly volunteer team at the League of Women Voters – Downeast who plan and coordinate this series includes: Martha Dickinson, Michael Fisher, Starr Gilmartin, Maggie Harling, Lisa Leaverton, Ann Luther, Rick Lyles, Judith Lyles, Wendilee O’Brien, Lane Sturtevant, Leah Taylor, and Linda Washburn.

Democracy Forum: Participatory Democracy, encouraging citizens to take an active role in government and politics

This month:
We’ll talk about how young people are engaging politically nationwide and here in Maine. What motivates them? What challenges do they face? What can the larger community do to support their efforts? Why is it important to the future of democracy?

Guest/s:
Cole Cochrane, Co-founder, Maine Youth Action
Mahnoor Hussain, Program Director, CIRCLE
Anna Siegel, founding member of Maine Youth Climate Justice and co founder of Maine Youth Action

To learn more about this topic:
The teen brain: Mysteries and misconceptions | Knowable, April 2023
24 Ways to Grow Voters Before 2024 | CIRCLE, April 2023
The Youth Vote in 2022 | CIRCLE, April 2023
LWVME Youth Voting Age Study Info Session, April, 2023
How the Youth Vote Is Being Suppressed – Long Story Short | The Daily Show – YouTube, March, 2023
Making our ‘civic deserts’ more fertile – Island Institute, April, 2023
GOP lawyer Cleta Mitchell decries ease of ‘campus voting’ in private RNC pitch – The Washington Post, April, 2023

About the host:
Ann currently serves as Treasurer of the League of Women Voters of Maine and leads the LWVME Advocacy Team. She served as President of LWVME from 2003 to 2007 and as co-president from 2007-2009. In her work for the League, Ann has worked for greater public understanding of public policy issues and for the League’s priority issues in Clean Elections & Campaign Finance Reform, Voting Rights, Ethics in Government, Ranked Choice Voting, and Repeal of Term Limits. Representing LWVME at Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, she served that coalition as co-president from 2006 to 2011. She remains on the board of MCCE and serves as Treasurer. She is active in the LWV-Downeast and hosts their monthly radio show, The Democracy Forum, on WERU FM Community Radio -which started out in 2004 as an recurring special, and became a regular monthly program in 2012. She was the 2013 recipient of the Baldwin Award from the ACLU of Maine for her work on voting rights and elections. She joined the League in 1998 when she retired as Senior Vice President at SEI Investments. Ann was a founder of the MDI Restorative Justice Program, 1999 – 2000, and served on its Executive Board.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Host: Ann Luther, League of Women Voters of Maine

The mostly volunteer team at the League of Women Voters – Downeast who plan and coordinate this series includes: Martha Dickinson, Michael Fisher, Starr Gilmartin, Maggie Harling, Lisa Leaverton, Ann Luther, Rick Lyles, Judith Lyles, Wendilee O’Brien, Maryann Ogonowski, emerita, Lane Sturtevant, Leah Taylor, and Linda Washburn.

Democracy Forum: Participatory Democracy, encouraging citizens to take an active role in government and politics

This month:
Ballot Questions: Whose Initiatives Are They?
We’ll talk about the citizen initiative process in Maine: the sheer number of them, the money behind them, their strengths and shortcomings, home-grown vs. “from away.”
How does the initiative process work, and how is it working for Maine?
Can ordinary citizens can still run a ballot question?

Guest/s:
Shenna Bellows, Maine Secretary of State
Todd Donovan, Professor of Political Science, Western Washington University

To learn more about this topic:
As Abortion Measures Loom, GOP Raises New Barriers to Ballot Initiatives | The Pew Charitable Trusts, February, 2023
Missouri House Passes Bill Making It Harder for Voters To Amend State Constitution – Democracy Docket, February, 2023
Policy Matters: Ballot initiatives – Press Herald, November 17,2022
League Study On Maine’s Citizens’ Initiatives And People’s Veto Referenda, Fall, 2020
Initiatives without Engagement: A Realistic Appraisal of Direct Democracy’s Secondary Effects, Joshua J. Dyck & Edward L. Lascher, Jr., Jr., 2019
Democracy Forum – Citizen Initiatives: The Devil’s in the Details, April 19, 2019
Initiative and Referendum Overview and Resources | NCSL
Citizen Initiatives & Peoples Veto | Maine Secretary of State
Citizens as Legislators: Direct Democracy in the United States, Todd Donovan and Shaun Bowler, 1998

About the host:
Ann currently serves as Treasurer of the League of Women Voters of Maine and leads the LWVME Advocacy Team. She served as President of LWVME from 2003 to 2007 and as co-president from 2007-2009. In her work for the League, Ann has worked for greater public understanding of public policy issues and for the League’s priority issues in Clean Elections & Campaign Finance Reform, Voting Rights, Ethics in Government, Ranked Choice Voting, and Repeal of Term Limits. Representing LWVME at Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, she served that coalition as co-president from 2006 to 2011. She remains on the board of MCCE and serves as Treasurer. She is active in the LWV-Downeast and hosts their monthly radio show, The Democracy Forum, on WERU FM Community Radio -which started out in 2004 as an recurring special, and became a regular monthly program in 2012. She was the 2013 recipient of the Baldwin Award from the ACLU of Maine for her work on voting rights and elections. She joined the League in 1998 when she retired as Senior Vice President at SEI Investments. Ann was a founder of the MDI Restorative Justice Program, 1999 – 2000, and served on its Executive Board.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Host: Ann Luther, League of Women Voters of Maine

The mostly volunteer team at the League of Women Voters – Downeast who plan and coordinate this series includes: Martha Dickinson, Michael Fisher
Starr Gilmartin, Maggie Harling, Lisa Leaverton, Ann Luther, Judith Lyles, Rick Lyles, Wendilee O’Brien, Maryann Ogonowski, emerita, Lane Sturtevant, Leah Taylor
Linda Washburn

Democracy Forum: Participatory Democracy, encouraging citizens to take an active role in government and politics

This month:
If Small States Rule, Why Are They So Angry?
Does this small-state bias in the federal government equate to overrepresentation of rural interests?
Does it translate to policies that help rural areas thrive? Are communities in small or rural states actually thriving?
Do people in those communities feel like they’re thriving? Or does “rural resentment” account for minority rule at the federal level?
Senators from small states hold outsize sway in government to the point where they can block measures that the majority of Americans want. How are they using that power?
What does it mean for Maine?

Guest/s:
Amy Fried, John Mitchell Nickerson Professor or Political Science, UMaine
Michael Podhorzer, Chairman of the Board of the Analyst Institute; Assistant to the President for Strategic Research at the AFL-CIO

To learn more about this topic:

Paul Ryan Says Even MAGA Diehards Believe Trump Can’t Win in 2024 – The New York Times, March, 2023
Most Rural States 2023 | World Population Review
The Resentment Fueling the Republican Party Is Not Coming From the Suburbs – The New York Times, January, 2023
Rural Americans aren’t included in inflation figures – and for them, the cost of living may be rising faster | The Conversation, January, 2023
Opinion | Can Anything Be Done to Assuage Rural Rage? | The New York Times, January 2023
Opinion | How to fix American democracy during a ‘Great Pulling Apart’ – The Washington Post, January, 2023
Opinion | This Is How Red States Silence Blue Cities. And Democracy |The New York Times<, January, 2023 A Policy Renaissance Is Needed for Rural America to Thrive – The New York Times, December, 2022
America Is Growing Apart, Possibly for Good – The Atlantic, June 2022
Place-Based Resentment in Contemporary U.S. Elections: The Individual Sources of America’s Urban-Rural Divide, Nicholas Jacobs, B. Kal Munis, September, 2022
At War with Government | Columbia University Press, Amy Fried and Douglas B. Harris, 2021
How Educational Differences Are Widening America’s Political Rift – The New York Times, September, 2021
The Electoral College and the Rural-Urban Divide – The Aspen Institute, February, 2021
James P. Melcher and Amy Fried, “Two Maines in a (Potentially) New Swing State”. Chapter 14 in David A. Schultz and Rafael Jacob (editors), Presidential Swing States, Second Edition, 2018.
Red Fighting Blue: How Geography and Electoral Rules Polarize American Politics | Cambridge University Press, David Hopkins, 2017
The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker| University of Chicago Press, Kathy Cramer, 2016
Strangers in Their Own Land | The New Press, Arlie Russell Hochschild, 2016

About the host:
Ann currently serves as Treasurer of the League of Women Voters of Maine and leads the LWVME Advocacy Team. She served as President of LWVME from 2003 to 2007 and as co-president from 2007-2009. In her work for the League, Ann has worked for greater public understanding of public policy issues and for the League’s priority issues in Clean Elections & Campaign Finance Reform, Voting Rights, Ethics in Government, Ranked Choice Voting, and Repeal of Term Limits. Representing LWVME at Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, she served that coalition as co-president from 2006 to 2011. She remains on the board of MCCE and serves as Treasurer. She is active in the LWV-Downeast and hosts their monthly radio show, The Democracy Forum, on WERU FM Community Radio -which started out in 2004 as an recurring special, and became a regular monthly program in 2012. She was the 2013 recipient of the Baldwin Award from the ACLU of Maine for her work on voting rights and elections. She joined the League in 1998 when she retired as Senior Vice President at SEI Investments. Ann was a founder of the MDI Restorative Justice Program, 1999 – 2000, and served on its Executive Board.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Host: Ann Luther, League of Women Voters of Maine

The mostly volunteer team at the League of Women Voters – Downeast who plan and coordinate this series includes: Martha Dickinson, Starr Gilmartin,
Maggie Harling, Lisa Leaverton, Ann Luther, Rick Lyles, Judith Lyles, Wendilee O’Brien, Maryann Ogonowski, Pam Person, Lane Sturtevant, Leah Taylor, Linda Washburn

Democracy Forum: Participatory Democracy, encouraging citizens to take an active role in government and politics

This month:
Compared to their population, rural states are over-represented in the federal government, from the U.S. Senate to the Electoral College, the Supreme Court, and possibly even the U.S. House.
How has the come about; how far can it go?
How does this affect Maine?
Where is this heading, and what can or should be done about it?

Guest/s:
Mark Brewer, Professor and Interim Chair of the Department of Political Science at the University of Maine
Alexander Keyssar, Matthew W. Stirling Jr. Professor of History and Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School

To learn more about this topic:
U.S. Senate: Origins and Foundations | Senate.gov
The Senate: From White Supremacy to Governmental Gridlock – UVA Press
The Senate: Threat or Backbone of American Democracy? | Divided We Fall June, 2021
The Electoral College and the Rural-Urban Divide – The Aspen Institute, February, 2021
Two Senators per State: A Recipe for Minority Domination | Second Rate Democracy, 2020
The history of the Electoral College and our national conversation about race | Harvard Kennedy School, August, 2020
Alexander Keyssar — Why Do We Still Have the Electoral College? | Politics and Prose, November, 2020
The Stubborn Survival of the Electoral College – WSJ, August 2020
American democracy’s Senate problem, explained – Vox, December, 2019
Here’s How to Fix the Senate – The Atlantic, January, 2019
The Founder’ monumental constitutional mistake; 2 senators from each state | NationofChange, October, 2018
Misrepresentation in the House of Representatives | Brookings, February 2017
The electoral college badly distorts the vote. And it’s going to get worse | The Washington Post, November, 2016
As American as Apple Pie? The Rural Vote’s Disproportionate Slice of Power – The New York Times, November, 2016
Sizing Up the Senate: The Unequal Consequences of Equal Representation, Lee, Oppenheimer, 1999
When Adding New States Helped the Republicans – The Atlantic, September, 2019

About the host:
Ann currently serves as Treasurer of the League of Women Voters of Maine and leads the LWVME Advocacy Team. She served as President of LWVME from 2003 to 2007 and as co-president from 2007-2009. In her work for the League, Ann has worked for greater public understanding of public policy issues and for the League’s priority issues in Clean Elections & Campaign Finance Reform, Voting Rights, Ethics in Government, Ranked Choice Voting, and Repeal of Term Limits. Representing LWVME at Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, she served that coalition as co-president from 2006 to 2011. She remains on the board of MCCE and serves as Treasurer. She is active in the LWV-Downeast and hosts their monthly radio show, The Democracy Forum, on WERU FM Community Radio -which started out in 2004 as an recurring special, and became a regular monthly program in 2012. She was the 2013 recipient of the Baldwin Award from the ACLU of Maine for her work on voting rights and elections. She joined the League in 1998 when she retired as Senior Vice President at SEI Investments. Ann was a founder of the MDI Restorative Justice Program, 1999 – 2000, and served on its Executive Board.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Host: Ann Luther, League of Women Voters of Maine

The mostly volunteer team at the League of Women Voters – Downeast who plan and coordinate this series includes: Martha Dickinson, Starr Gilmartin,
Maggie Harling, Lisa Leaverton, Ann Luther, Rick Lyles, Judith Lyles, Wendilee O’Brien, Maryann Ogonowski, Pam Person, Lane Sturtevant, Leah Taylor, Linda Washburn

Democracy Forum: Participatory Democracy, encouraging citizens to take an active role in government and politics

This month:
A number of towns in Hancock County are doing, have done, or are thinking of doing comprehensive planning. So, what is comprehensive planning, why do Maine towns do it?
Why should they do it and how often?
What comprises a comprehensive plan?
What difference does it make in a community, why should people care?

Guest/s:
Susan Lessard, Bucksport Town Manager
Noel Musson, Principal/Planner with the Musson Group
Evan Richert, Former director of the State Planning Office

To learn more about this topic:
Comprehensive Plans: Municipal Planning Assistance Program: Maine DACF
Comprehensive Planning: A Manual for Maine Communities
Land Use Planning | National Working Waterfront Network
Comprehensive Plan | Town of Orland, December, 2022
Priority Strategy: Increasing Physical Activity Through Community Design | CDC, December, 2022.
The Future of the Comprehensive Plan | Journal of Comparative Urban Law and Policy May, 2022
A New Era of Equity-Based Comprehensive Planning…Finally | GreenLaw, September, 2021

About the host:
Ann currently serves as Treasurer of the League of Women Voters of Maine and leads the LWVME Advocacy Team. She served as President of LWVME from 2003 to 2007 and as co-president from 2007-2009. In her work for the League, Ann has worked for greater public understanding of public policy issues and for the League’s priority issues in Clean Elections & Campaign Finance Reform, Voting Rights, Ethics in Government, Ranked Choice Voting, and Repeal of Term Limits. Representing LWVME at Maine Citizens for Clean Elections, she served that coalition as co-president from 2006 to 2011. She remains on the board of MCCE and serves as Treasurer. She is active in the LWV-Downeast and hosts their monthly radio show, The Democracy Forum, on WERU FM Community Radio -which started out in 2004 as an recurring special, and became a regular monthly program in 2012. She was the 2013 recipient of the Baldwin Award from the ACLU of Maine for her work on voting rights and elections. She joined the League in 1998 when she retired as Senior Vice President at SEI Investments. Ann was a founder of the MDI Restorative Justice Program, 1999 – 2000, and served on its Executive Board.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download